Friday, February 24, 2012

Velvet Chicken

This is definitely a secret weapon in cooking up Asian dishes. This makes a major difference in cooking with superior dark soy sauce vs. regular soy sauce. The flavor is much more robust and potent and gives the dish the color you see in restaurants. I always use this brand but any dark soy sauce should do.

Just throw everything into the pot

Then the whole chicken to poach

Voila! Done. The meat is so tender and flavorful. It was so soft the skin was coming off but that's okay because you chop it up into pieces when serving anyway so the aesthetics of it won't really matter.

I'm not a big gadget/tons of small appliances fan but this is a must have for every kitchen, especially if you're trying to eat clean. We love brown rice and use this all the time; I LOVE my rice cooker! You can get these cheap anywhere; it's so great in helping to make quick and easy dinners, you just throw however much rice you want in, and here's a nice little trick: fill it with enough water so that when you stick your index finger in to touch the top of the rice, water should come up to about the first line of your finger. The rice cooker will do its thing while you go on doing yours and typically you'll all be done at the same time and even if the rice finishes first, there's a setting on it that will keep it warm so it's a win-win situation! I really can't say enough about how invaluable it's been to me.

Served the chicken on a bed of mixed rice and some blanched broccoli sauteed with some fresh garlic and hoisin sauce - delicious! And what's great is that you can keep the liquid and cook up more chicken in it again later.